


there's a gap in-between

by citrusandbergamot



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cage Trauma, Episode: s06e11 Appointment in Samarra, Psychological Horror, Sam Winchester in Lucifer's Cage, Tortured Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 16:15:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16308509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusandbergamot/pseuds/citrusandbergamot
Summary: Sam cannot die. Death comes for him anyway.





	there's a gap in-between

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everybody, it's been almost 9 years and I'm still not over Sam-in-the-Cage post-Swan Song. 
> 
> I tried to use fewer tags for this than is my wont so your warnings are here: this snippet is more akin to poetry than prose and I am fond of analogy and I'm not afraid to use it. This also gets quite dark. Possibly pretentious. Body horror and psychological torture make up at least 60% of it and multiple mentions are made to Sam craving death and being killed repeatedly. You know, Cage stuff. 
> 
> It's been in a drafts folder for about two years and, since I have an essay due at midnight, right now seemed like the best time to post on AO3 (congratulations on meeting the funding goal! Go us!). There is a second part to this, when Sam and Death meet again in the season 8 finale but I figured this snippet could stand alone because that one isn't written. The title is from Where I End and You Begin by Radiohead ( ~~why think of titles when radiohead has so many usable lyrics~~ ). Hope you like it.

* * *

 

 

Sam had given up begging for Death. The day was coming, eventually, when Death would reap God, the Earth, the whole universe, except-

 

Not here. Not in the Cage. There would never be any death for Sam. He’s tied to the center of a supernova, a never-ending reaction of nuclear rage, explosion without impact. Just heat-death, sheering flesh from bones.

 

How long had he been down here? Had he always been here? Sam was sure there had been moments – yes, with Dean. A lifetime of fights and fighting. Had that been here, in the Cage? Time seems to move strangely, the past and the present layered on top of each other, stretching endlessly. Sometimes Sam remembers. Sometimes he doesn’t. Dean, Dean… had his words always hurt that much? Was it a memory? Sam tries to touch Dean, but he can’t move his arm. He doesn’t appear to have an arm to move, just bone and fire and the hardness in the planes of Dean’s face.  

 

The dark whispers to Sam, Dean’s eyes turning away in disgust. That’s right, Dean’s always known, Dad said, Dad told him to –  

 

He dreams of Dean returned, fresh from Hell, kneeling with eyes black and mouth curved, sinful, a knife pressed to Sam’s throat. So easy, the shadows croon in Dean’s voice, now that it’s too late. You were never going to be saved, Sam, you never could be saved.

 

When Lucifer comes to him, casting the world into so much shadow, he looks like Dean, the green of his eyes clear and terrible as the Dawn, mouth twisted. (It hurts to look, He’s so bright, He  _hurts_ , even with every seam sewn up tight). Dean had worn that look at seventeen. Sam sees it now, living the memory afresh, fresh, red painting over old blood. Dean had been inhumanly pretty at seventeen. His mouth had laughed a lot that summer, the soft shine of his lips parted by Sam’s amusing ungainliness, the widening breadth of his shoulders behind the Impala’s wheel, like Chevrolet had built her just for him.

 

Lucifer wears fond and sad like an entomologist wears gloves, narrating to the bug he pins open, his needles through soft flesh.

 

Come on, Sammy, Lucifer says in Dean’s voice, whiskey-graveled and safe-as-houses. This is the closest Sam gets to Death in the Cage. When Sam agrees. (Sam makes himself ignore the seams, bursting with the light of Dawn, barely contained.) It’s not pretend – Lucifer would never allow Sam enough layers for something like  _pretense_  – because Sam is so grateful. Lucifer likes it when Sam is grateful. When Sam agrees, Sam and Dean live out a normal life, together. Sometimes Lucifer gives them decades.

 

Sometimes, only minutes. Lucifer is a being of endless patience, but his rage makes him mercurial.

 

Sam is looking down, Dean’s hand is twisting, fingers curling lovingly in the delicate knobs of Sam’s spine, blood coating his arms in a torturer’s glove. I had to do it, little brother, says the voice in his ear, and Sam mind knows, he  _knows,_  he has a real body, he should be dying except oh god –  _nonononono_  – Dean, why, Dean, why –  _notDean-notDean-no_  – why, hasn’t it been Dean this whole time –

 

It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, blood bubbling up his throat, Dean,  _why_  –

 

 – can he breathe. His lungs move without obstruction, no knife-black pressure. Sam breathes again, in and out. In. Out. It doesn’t change. Sam presses a hand to his side; spine intact. He has a hand, whole, red blood contained by unbroken skin, bones trapped under tendons, the insides no longer confused with the outsides.

 

 

 

> Hello Sam, says Death.
> 
>  
> 
> Hello, says Sam. His voice doesn’t hurt. He feels like he’s floating and it lurches his stomach like a free-fall; when he was eight and they’d snuck into a midway, eaten so much cotton candy and funnel cake, they’d ridden every ride, until Sam’s stomach was around his ears and the carnival lights looked like stars; when he was fifteen, nursing pride and college application letters, smiles forced and jittery, the echos of slamming doors ringing between then, he'd watched Dean down his liquor with a steady hand; when he was twenty and he'd wrapped his arms around Jess’s waist, smelling her hair as she laughed, unpacking the boxes in their first apartment, afternoon sun stretched around them.
> 
>  
> 
> Sit down, Sam, says Death.
> 
>  
> 
> Sam nods. Though Sam is still floating, Death seems solid enough for his own chair. Sam tries to remember how to bend, muscles and tendons and ligaments working together inside, on the right side, inwardly-trapped. Death is patient, he lets Sam takes his time. There is a chair under Sam. The fabric is soft. 
> 
>  
> 
> Not your usual décor is it, my dear, says Death. Sam shakes his head, trying to pop the pressure in his ears. He can’t stop touching the arm of the chair, the soft drag against his thumb. 
> 
>  
> 
> The valleys on Death’s face are sharp contrast, his eyes luminous. Sam doesn’t say anything for awhile. He hasn’t needed anything but screams for so very long.
> 
>  
> 
> Is it time, he wants to ask. Is it the end. He drags his thumb back and forth. His mind is stumbling over the words but something in his chest yearns, stretching outwards. Sam is used to this feeling, the elasticity of his heart as it’s dragged from him, his hope on his outsides. Lucifer is always delicate when he has Sam’s heart is in His hands; Sam knows this feeling well. It’s the waiting that hurts.
> 
>  
> 
> Is it Dean, Same wants to say, the impossible, bloody stretch of it. Death's grimace is a crow turning its sharp beak.
> 
>  
> 
> It is, in fact, at your brother’s behest that I am here, says Death.
> 
>  
> 
> Am I finally dead, asks Sam. Something flickers on the shadows of Death’s face.
> 
>  
> 
> You are not dead, Sam, says Death and like a wind through ancient pines something cracks within Sam. You are in the Cage, Death says, I have come to get you out.
> 
>  
> 
> Beyond the place where Sam and Death sit, thunder and fury sound. Sam freezes in place, thumb stilling. His mind wails with the truth; he can never be set free.
> 
>  
> 
> He cannot get in, Sam, but I also cannot linger, Death says, voice rising in a tempest over a far-off sea. I can take you now – Death opens his black medical case, like a doctor of old – or I can come back the next time you die.
> 
>  
> 
> Sam knows, better than the green of his brother’s eyes, better than the blood-taste in his mouth. Sam knows how long it will take Lucifer to let him die. The thunder around them is a howling, murderous thing. Sam knows. Lucifer will hold him on the edge for centuries.
> 
>  
> 
> Yes, says Sam. How easily he can still say it, after everything.
> 
>  
> 
> Death’s eyes are gentle, like the butcher to a calf.
> 
>  
> 
> Sleep, Sam, Death says.
> 
>  
> 
> Sam closes his eyes. He thinks:  _Dean_. Sleeping side-by-side, endless motels, calloused hands, gruff laughter, absent-humming. Desert roads and black highways in halos of orange, faded light.  _Dean._  Dean, and a thousand miles of truth in Dean that Lucifer could never, couldn't ever... There  are truths that He he never saw fit to corrupt, He never even tried, _how_ had Sam let himself  _believe_   –
> 
>  
> 
> Between the span of one moment and the next, Sam is gone and knows no more.

 

In the depths below the earth, deeper than the furthest ground and the farthest shadow, a star of Morning burns and burns and Hell  _trembles_ with his rage. 


End file.
